The Rogue Element (Scott Priest Book 1) (4 page)

CHAPTER 4

I had just taken a long pull from a bottle
of water that had been baking in the car for at least a week when I saw someone attempting to enter the apartment building I had just left. A double take confirmed the identity of the person I was seeing, though my disbelief at seeing her refused to subside.

I jumped out of the car without thinking as Kyle McKenna stood impatiently at the front stoop. She was pressing apartment buzzers indiscriminately in the hopes that someone would let her in. Typical of her bottom-feeder tabloid journalist methodology.

I held my badge out in front of me as I approached, wishing she would give me an actual reason to arrest her. Unfortunately there was nothing in the Colorado Penal Code that outlawed her lack of professional integrity.

Her already bright face lit up even more when she saw me coming. Not exactly the reaction I was hoping to inspire.

“Well, if it isn’t Scott Priest and his waving-the-badge routine. It’s time to up your game, my friend. That stopped scaring people a long time ago.”

“I saw you trolling through here and figured you’d obviously gotten lost. I decided to be a nice guy and offer you an official police escort back to wherever it was you came from. This isn’t the safest neighborhood for pretty young vultures.”

“What a charmer. You must have been the stud of your alternative high school.”

“Believe me, when it comes to you none of the charm is genuine.”

“Of course it isn’t,” she said with a broad smile that communicated her disbelief.

Kyle was attractive even when she wasn’t trying to be – which by my estimation was most of the time. Her curly auburn hair was usually pinned back in some haphazard ponytail, a messy chic that she probably saw in some magazine. Her wannabe hippie vibe was normally completed with a pair of faded blue jeans, a tee shirt from her 1990’s concert-going days, and a pair of open-toed sandals that never took a season off, including the dead of winter. Her sharp green eyes were always probing, and if you allowed her the opportunity, they would look deeper into you than you would ever want a pair of eyes to look. It was a trait that most good journalists seemed to have. And Kyle McKenna was a good journalist. Unfortunately, she chose to align her skills with one of the worst tabloid rags in the country, a rag that devoted most of its ink to skewering the Denver police department and the men and women who served in it. That made her the enemy.

“If you’ve finished putting the moves on me could you please put the badge away? I would hate for the neighbors to think that I’m being harassed.”

I smirked as I hung the shield around my neck. “Seems to me you have the market cornered on harassment, Ms. McKenna. The fact that you leaked Marisol’s name this morning…”

“That wasn’t me.”

“Really? And I suppose it’s pure coincidence that you’re stalking her children right now. Do you think I’m that stupid?”

“Your lack of intelligence, though well-documented, has nothing to do with the current situation, detective. Marisol has been formally identified, which now makes this a full-fledged news story. It also makes Dana and Christina fair game.”

“There’s nothing fair about your game, Kyle. They just lost their mother for Christ’s sake.”

“And I’m very curious to know why. I thought you would be too.”

“Our motivations are very different.”

When an elderly woman emerged from the apartment building, Kyle took it upon herself to hold the door open for her. I would have thought it a nice gesture had I not known what she planned to do after the woman cleared the doorway.

“I’m not finished talking to you,” I declared before she could take her first step inside.

“You mean you’re not finished insulting my character.”

“Don’t you need to actually have character before I can insult it?”

She sighed as she held on to the door. “Don’t you have a murder to solve?”

When she attempted to walk through the door, I pushed it closed in front of her.

“That was totally unnecessary, Scott. You could’ve crushed my damn fingers.”

“You published Marisol’s name before her family could be notified. Did you even care if her kids saw it?”

Kyle’s smooth pale face suddenly hardened. “I told you I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

“It doesn’t matter. I can’t let them be exploited any more than they already have been.”

“Look, I know the Denver PD is in this cute little totalitarian-rule phase right now, but this is still a free country with a free press. I don’t need your permission to do anything.” With that, she began pushing apartment buzzers again.

“They might be too busy grieving to answer the door.”

“No shit they’re grieving. I’m not a total goon.”

“You’re trying to interview them for a newspaper article in the midst of the worst time of their lives. I’d say that makes you a goon.”

Kyle rolled her eyes. “You just interviewed them. What does that make you?”

“A homicide detective doing my job.”

“I’m doing my job too.”

“I’ve seen first-hand what can happen when you do your job.”

“What’s with all this hostility? It’s not like I’ve ever written about you. Sure you’re a butthole, but you’re also a solid cop. As far as I’m concerned that’s all my readers need to know.”

I was less than overwhelmed by her flattery. “What about all the other good cops in the department? Why not expose your readers to them?”

“Because the dirty ones sell papers. And from what I’m starting to learn, there are a lot more of them than there are of you.”

“The mud-slinging has officially begun,” I responded through clenched teeth. “How have you not been sued for libel by now?”

“Because in spite of all their self-serving press conferences and hollow proclamations to the public, your bosses know that everything I write about is true.”

Despite my lack of tolerance for Kyle and the newspaper she wrote for, there were plenty of people within the department who were afraid of her, and after this morning’s meeting with Hitchcock, I was finally beginning to understand why.

Her first investigative piece on the DPD came on the heels of Mayor Sonya Richmond’s U.S. Senate campaign and subsequent victory last November. A few weeks before the election, Mayor Richmond’s husband and campaign manager Elliott had become the target of a series of searing accusations made by a former FBI agent. She not only claimed that he had attempted to rig the election, but that he also arranged for the murder of a colleague and lawyer named Julia Leeds when she threatened to expose him. According to former Special Agent Camille Grisham, Elliott’s extramarital affair with Julia also played into his motivation.

Even though the story was as convoluted as any the city had ever seen, among members of the department it would have added up to little more than another sordid sex scandal involving power and politics – two things the average cop cares nothing about. But when two homicide detectives were shot in the midst of working the Leeds murder, the story took on an entirely new dimension. 

The man believed to be responsible for those shootings was a rookie patrol officer. Shortly after he confessed to killing Detective Walter Graham and seriously injuring his partner Chloe Sullivan, he also hinted at playing a role in Julia Leeds’ death, though he refused to say what that role was. What he did say was that he didn’t act alone, claiming that his co-conspirators were high-level officials. After more than two and a half months in jail awaiting trial, he has yet to reveal anything more.

Many in the media assumed that these high-level officials were somehow associated with the department. Once Kyle McKenna began her daily in-depth reporting on the story, assumption became fact in the minds of the public, and as more layers were stripped away, including the possibility that the officer may have had a direct connection to Elliott Richmond and possibly the mayor, the figureheads within the department began to panic. The result was an informal code of silence that precluded them from addressing the story in public. The code of silence extended into the squad room as well, much to the dismay of the rank and file. This practice allowed members of the media – the Mile High Dispatch especially – to run wild. Every article written by Kyle featured the latest report of police brutality, racial profiling and every other transgression that a cop could be accused of. And she rode the wave of negativity all the way to record circulation. She did her share of good reporting along the way, but she also succeeded in throwing a lot of good men and women under the bus.

I’d managed to evade the wrath of her pen up to this point, despite being quoted by her more than a dozen times over the past two years, but I figured it would only be a matter of time before I made the honor roll. Perhaps the task that Hitchcock charged me with would finally be enough to clinch my spot.

“If there are so many dirty cops flooding the street, why aren’t you out there chasing them down?” 

“Because the story I need to cover exists right here,” Kyle answered as she impatiently pressed another apartment buzzer.

“The only thing that exists here are two very vulnerable, very frightened teenage girls who miss their mother. Considering the fact that you wouldn’t recognize a human-interest story if it punched you in the face, I don’t see what angle you could possibly be working.”

“I’m working the Marisol Alvarez is connected to Oliver Brandt angle.”

My poker face must not have been strong enough, as Kyle seemed to sense my surprise immediately.

“Tell me I’m not scooping you, detective,” she said with a thin smile.

My expression tightened. “Wouldn’t you just love that? Sadly for you I’m already well aware of the connection.”

“How well aware are you?” She was starting to get that probing journalist look in her eye that I dreaded.

“Marisol worked for him.”

“In what capacity?”

“I figured you would have already known that.”

“I do. I just want to see how much you know.”

My eyes lit up with a sudden realization. “Has this whole thing been your passive-aggressive way of pinning me down for another interview?”

“
Pinning
you down for an interview? Who’s being passive-aggressive now?”

I smiled in spite of myself. “You wish.”

“Can you please just answer my original question, detective?”

A soft, almost vulnerable expression briefly washed over her face that I found appealing – and I hated myself for it.

“Off the record of course.”

“Of course.”

“Marisol worked in Commander Brandt’s home for three years. Something happened and she was let go.” 

“And?”

I shrugged. “You claimed to know so much about it, I was hoping you could fill in the rest.”

She looked disappointed that the ball landed back in her court so abruptly, but true to form, she quickly picked it up and ran. “Marisol and your commander were the only two people in the house during the altercation that led to her firing, so most of what I’ve gathered is second-hand information. But it’s very interesting second-hand information.”

“You’ve got my attention.”   

“According to someone who was apparently very close to the situation, Marisol was fired because she overheard a telephone conversation that she shouldn’t have.”

“What was the nature of the call?”

“My source claimed that Marisol didn’t say. When he asked, she told him that he was better off not knowing. So he didn’t press.”

“Go on.” 

“Marisol told him that she had accidentally walked into Brandt’s office while he was in the midst of this conversation. When she saw him, she immediately walked back out. But based on what she had heard and Brandt’s panic at seeing her, it was a conversation she wanted to hear more of. So she stood outside the office while the conversation continued. According to my guy, Marisol was quite the hoarder of information.”

“Where I come from, it’s called being too damn nosey for your own good.”

“That’s certainly another way to put it.”

My flippant remark aside, the story seemed to be in line with what Dana Alvarez had told me about her mother’s inquisitive nature.

Kyle continued. “Marisol stood by the door listening for over five minutes before Brandt suddenly walked out. When he saw her standing there, he immediately accused her of eavesdropping. She denied it. Some kind of back and forth ensued – mostly yelling on Brandt’s part. Next thing you know, Marisol is out of a job.”

“Sounds to me like there was more to this than her merely eavesdropping. Maybe there had been some prior issues with Marisol and Brandt simply viewed this incident as the final straw.”

“As far as I’ve heard Bethany Brandt loved her. If there were prior issues with Marisol’s performance, they were Oliver Brandt’s issues alone.”

I made a mental note to put Bethany Brandt on my interview list. Convincing her to sit down for that interview would be another story. “Could your source tell you anything else?”